More Surprises!

Hooola!!!

Well. We had another BIG surprise last night. I was saying my nightly prayers and the phone rang. After a few seconds Hermana Wise got up and went to answer it. Suddenly I couldn´t concentrate on my prayer anymore, because let´s face it, a middle of the night phone call is almost never something good. Then I heard a "WHAT??? Where am I going?? What time do I have to be there??" Oh nooooo. This can´t be happening!!! But it was-Hermana Wise was being emergently transferred!!!!!! She had to be at the terminal on a bus to Guayaquil at 6 the next morning. By the time she got off the phone it was almost 11. I´m sure you can all imagine what followed, and if you can´t I´ll sum it up for you-lots of tears, lot´s of throwing things randomly into luggage, lots of freaking out on the part of Hermanas Castillo and Chamberlain because WE´VE ONLY BEEN HERE FOR TWO WEEKS!!!!! Even in a smaller sector that would be tough but Alamos is HUGE!!!!!! Hermana Castillo started to cry and I started to feel nauseous-and needless to say, no one slept very well. This morning off she went with our zone leader Elder Griswold, who is now the new assistant (Elder Coba´s leaving early on Tuesday so that he can go back to school.) We have no idea what the emergency was but all we know is that we have no idea where anything is or what we´re doing really. BUT-we know that we can figure it out. The members have already stepped up to help us a lot and we have a general idea of where we´re going tonight at least. I told Hermana Castillo that we just had to take it day by day because if we tried to think more ahead we´d just start freaking out again. So we´re going to be fine. But prayers would be appreciated-because we pretty much have no idea what´s going on!!!

Anyway, Gothy and Katty were baptized this past Saturday!!! It was really awesome, I had to give a talk and I accidentally said that Heavenly Father is flying for you instead of watching out for you, but Hermana Castillo said she didn´t even notice, so bueno. Gothy´s mom said at the end that her daughter was setting the example for all the viejitos (old people). She´s hilarious. And she´s totally getting baptized too. Pray that she and Jose Miguel find a way to get married earlier than October!!!

We´re working with some really great people. Leonel is a friend of a recent convert Miller. We´re going to put a date on him soon because he comes to church and the activities all by himself and he´s reading and basically he´s just really awesome and prepared. Plus we´re teaching Javier who´s a reference of Jorge Monge, one of the members. He came to a family home evening at Jorge´s house where we taught the Plan of Salvation and he had some really good questions. We were supposed to teach him tonight but we weren´t sure if he remembered and plus we couldn´t remember how to get to Jorge´s house (you can laugh, it is kind of funny). So we called Jorge to beg for his help, and he called us back and said that Javier was still very interested and he´d be waiting by the bridge by our house to take us over to his place and teach him. SWEET!!! I love people that help other people!!!!

Now for the questions. Yes I did feel the earthquake!!! They say that it was really deep under the earth which is why it was really more of a tremor than a quake, but I was standing at the stove making hot chocolate (there´s no microwave) and all of a sudden I felt the floor shaking and I thought that maybe one of my companions just had a really heavy step, but then I noticed that the powerlines outside were also moving and I was like uhhhh . . . . hermanaaaas????? Then I heard Hermana Castillo yell, AHHH!!! HERMANA WISE!!! She´d never experienced an earthquake before. It was all fine, nothing got broken or hurt, but it was still a little unsettling!!! About La Churona-I´m actually not sure what that is and the 20th of August passed without us hearing anything about it!! The only reason I know what it is is because I read HNA Glanzer´s blog and she talked about it. You´ll probably get more info from her, Loja is HUGELY Catholic. In the terminal they´ve got a glass box with the Virgin Mary in it, it´s a little bit frightening. In Cuenca there are 6 wards and one branch, and there are 16 missionaries. It´s a pretty small zone, but the ward limits are huge, they go on forever. I did get the second box from you mom, with the pop rocks (and I have the BEST video of it too, I´ll try to upload it) but I haven´t gotten them from Grandma yet. Maybe tomorrow??

Well, can´t think of anything else to say. I watched the birthday video and LOVED it!!! It made me very happy to see my whole family, even the cats!!! Don´t worry, we celebrated here too, Hermana Afrania bought me a cake and everything. Hopefully my cable works and I can upload some pictures!!!

MUCHO AMOR

Hermana Chamberlain